“Okay, Mr. Insightful, so what’s our next step? By the way, knowing why he’s doing it doesn’t really help a lot.”

Manfred looked down. He appeared to be counting to ten. Olivia smiled.

“We still have to get the jewelry back,” Manfred said. “And I think we have to show that it was there all the time. Then he’ll have no more excuse to harass me. Or if he drums something up, no one will credit it.”

“I can’t gain entry again by a ruse,” Olivia said. The knocking at the door had begun, and they both stepped away from the window, retreating farther into the house to the former dining room. “I’ve tried to break in at night, and that didn’t work. I could try it again. This time, maybe, there won’t be anyone there waiting on me.”

Though since Falco had died, Olivia’s father had to be sure she’d been in the area. Maybe other men were just hanging around waiting for her. Maybe they would come to Manfred’s place of residence to look for her now. To try to find what connection he had with her. At least her name hadn’t been in the paper; she’d finally tracked down the article online.

“Or we could ask Fiji if she could help,” Manfred was saying when she pulled herself out of the abyss.

Olivia felt her mouth fall open. “Fiji? You’ve got to be kidding me. She can’t break and enter.”

“She wouldn’t go about it the same as you,” he said. “I don’t think you know how powerful Fiji is. You don’t know what she can do.”

“And you do?”

He nodded.

Olivia felt piqued. “In what way?” she demanded.

“Olivia! You know she’s a witch.”

“Yeah, yeah. And?”

“Do you know how good a witch she really is?”

Olivia reconsidered the first answer that almost flew out of her mouth. Instead, she said, “I guess I can hardly be a big skeptic since I sleep with an energy-draining vampire.”

“Good point. Anyway, she might come up with a solution that we haven’t thought of.”

“We can’t cross the road until Lewis and his pet journalist are gone.”

Without a word, Manfred turned on the television and they watched the news, ignoring the sound of persistent knocking at the front door. Then at the back.

There was unrest in the Baltic, refugees were dying in Africa, and the stock market wasn’t doing well. Just another wonderful day on the news circuit. In a ludicrous attempt to make the future seem less grim, nutritionists had discovered that cheese curd was a miracle food.

Olivia said, “I’ve never even seen a cheese curd.”

“Me, either.”

That was the extent of their conversation until the knocking stopped and they heard a car drive away.

Manfred called Fiji right away. “We’re coming over, okay?” he said.